Google Webmaster Help: Do More Pages Help Your Site Rank Better?

A certain Leah of New York has asked that question. Here is what GoogleWebmasterHelp has to say:

It cannot be assumed that just because a site has a large number of indexed pages, then it automatically gets a higher ranking. Google Webmaster says this is not the case.

The case is, if you have more pages that have different keywords, then you have the opportunity where Google might be able to rank for the individual queries that a user has.

Google Webmaster reminds all SEO practitioners that just having more pages doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be in good shape or get some sort of ranking boost. It takes more than pages, to be honest.

Typically, if a site does have more pages, it could possibly mean that it has more links pointing to it, which means it has higher page rank.

If that is the case, then Google says they might be willing to crawl a little bit deeper into the website. In addition, if that site has a higher page rank, then they might think it is a little bit better to use this query.

Webmaster reiterates that just having a big website with many pages by itself does not automatically confirm boost. What matters most is that, if you have a number of links or a number of page ranks that is leading to deeper crawling within your website, then that might be the sort of indicator that perhaps your site would rank just a little bit higher.

To recap, just having a number of pages does not give a boost — though it might give you a few more opportunities. In such case, the only reason you get that opportunity is because Google sees more links on your website so they are willing to crawl a little bit deeper and find more pages to index.